I read yesterday that Moses Hall became the fifth building at UC Berkeley to lose its name( because of the allegedly racist views of its namesake, Bernard Moses, a prominent faculty member from 1875 to 1911. All of the buildings have been unnamed since 2020. “Disappearing” people is straight out of the Joseph Stalin playbook and I’ve never learned to see Stalin as a role model. According to the Berkeley news article that I read, Niko Kolodny, former chair of the philosophy department, said he became aware via email that Moses’ name “had been deeply disturbing to several people of color.” The University of California established a Bernard Moses Memorial Lecture in 1937, and Moses Hall was named in 1965. The fact that it took more than 80 years since Moses was first recognized for the university to familiarize itself with his views (via an email!) and deem them inappropriate… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Indians
Bye Bye Berkeley
UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall was stripped of its name earlier this year because the building’s namesake — Alfred Louis Kroeber, born in 1876 and the founder of the study of anthropology in the American West — is a powerful symbol that continues to evoke exclusion and erasure for Native Americans. I hope I’m not being too cynical when I say that I don’t believe there are more than a handful of Native Americans in the country who could actually say anything of substance about Kroeber. I’d never heard of him myself. Granted I’m not a Native American or an anthropologist, but I’m well-informed. It turns out Kroeber was quite an accomplished scholar, a pioneer of American anthropology, author of more than 500 publications, a co-founder and president of the American Anthropological Association, presided over the American Folklore Society and founded the Linguistic Society of America. Among the key reasons highlighted… Read more →
5 Questions on the Covington Story
A group of black men taunted a group of white kids as faggots, incest babies and niggers (one kid was black). Would the story have been reported differently if the men were white and the kids were black? Would the story have been reported differently (or at all) if a white guy was banging a drum in an Indian kid’s face? Would the story have been reported differently if no one was wearing a MAGA hat? Would the story have been reported differently if the kids were girls instead of boys? (Again, assume no MAGA hats.) Should morality of action be calculated based on race, sex and hats? (I’m going to say no to this one.) Read more →
Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener — if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments. — Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 Read more →
Indian Givers
Via Best of the Web Today: Read more →